Rome (Italy). On 24 September 2024, it will be 90 years since the arrival of Sister Antonietta Böhm (1907 – 2008) in the American Continent. Her missionary vocation is identified with her own life totally oriented to the “da mihi animas cetera tolle”.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of her religious profession, Sister Antonietta affirmed, “They tell me that of Germany, my homeland, I retain only the language, and that all my way of being and acting is from here, from America.”
When on the 24th of September 1934, feast of Our Lady of Mercy, Sister Antonietta arrives in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, she is 27 years old. The journey, which began on 1 September in the port of Naples on the ship “Neptunia”, is described by Sister Antonietta with vivacity of details. The video, prepared by Sister Guadalupe Chavez, of the Province “Our Lady of Guadalupe” (MME), vice-postulator for the Cause of Beatification, collects salient elements.
The group of 33 new missionaries was led by Sister Luigia Piretta (1874 – 1958), a missionary for many years in Mexico and sent, after the General Chapter of 1934, to the Magellan lands in southern Chile. Sister Antonietta begins this experience in Patagonia, the land dreamed of by Don Bosco. On the Andean cordillera, among endless expanses of snow, she faces an austere poverty that comes with the lack of food and heating. Sister Antonieta helps the sisters to relive the spirit of Mornese with the same heart of the Foundress.
After 25 years of living in Patagonia, she is the Provincial of the Province of Rosario Santa Fé (Argentina) and six years later, she moves to the province of Peru and Bolivia. In 1969, she was sent to Mexico, where she spent the longest period of her life.
In the animation of the Mexican Province, she favors some priorities: to bring serenity, to nourish and maintain communion, to deepen the charism, to consolidate and promote new vocations. She is very attentive to the Sisters with delicate health and elderly. She concentrates her energies on the mission, giving priority to evangelization, especially among the poor.
Her preferential choice is for the poor. When she finishes her mandate as Provincial, she can devote more time to prayer and a new mission for the poor, undertaken with creativity. Every week for many years, there is a continuous coming and going of people through the house in which they live. Each one finds what is necessary to face with dignity the following the six days.
She listens to the confidences of people of all social conditions and ages, expresses understanding for every suffering and illness. The most touching encounters are those with women expecting a baby, often anxious about the course of the pregnancy or the risks announced. She encourages, supports trust, predicts a happy outcome. She follows everyone with prayer, trust, offering.
The blessing with the Statue of Mary Help of Christians received from Sister Ersilia Crugnola is the expression of a fulfillment. Sister Antonietta, in her 74 years of life in the American continent, was a missionary of love and faith, herald of the salvation that Jesus gives us, witness to the miracle of conversion which is always a healing that touches every dimension of life.
